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“Scientists behind a bombshell new report revealing global warming to be worse than ever are now worried that the Trump administration may try to change or suppress it because it contradicts the president’s denialist agenda.”

Or so the New York Times has claimed. And also, in its wake, papers including the London Evening Standard and the Guardian.

This is worse than mere #fakenews.

This is #fakenews with icing and cherries on top, rings on its fingers, bells on its toes, a specially commissioned foreword by Al Gore and a rave review (“I love these lies. I could not have written better ones myself”) written from hell by the tormented shade of Josef Goebbels.

No, actually, it might even be worse than that.

First, the New York Times initially claimed — before being embarrassed by the Daily Caller into a retraction— that this draft report from a National Climate Assessment by scientists from 13 federal agencies had “not yet been made public.”

Nope. As even some of the scientists who had contributed to it had to admit, draft versions of this report had been available on the internet for months.

New York Times readers are deserting in droves in protest that its new columnist, Bret Stephens, thinks incorrect thoughts about man-made global warming.

In his first column Stephens committed the cardinal sin of suggesting that maybe climate change isn’t quite the major existential threat that liberals have cracked up to be; and that maybe the environmentalists’ rabid zealotry is doing their cause more harm than good.

Claiming total certainty about the science traduces the spirit of science and creates openings for doubt whenever a climate claim proves wrong. Demanding abrupt and expensive changes in public policy raises fair questions about ideological intentions. Censoriously asserting one’s moral superiority and treating skeptics as imbeciles and deplorables wins few converts.

Mighty has been the progressives’ wrath.

According to Soros attack dog Joe Romm, it could scarcely have been worse if the New York Times had given the column to the former Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, David Duke.

According to the Guardian‘s Dana Nucitelli, the most charitable thing you could say about Stephens’s piece is that it’s “ignorant and wrong.”

My heroes are Copernicus, Galilei and Kepler, who sought the scientific truth based on observational evidence and defended it against the powerful authority of the church in Rome, at great personal cost.

Had the New York Times existed then – would you have seen it as part of your mission to insult and denigrate these scientists, as Stephens has done with climate scientists?

So, just like unicorn farming, then, only a bit more fantastical, naive, and ludicrous.

If “fake news” were a thing – that is, if it were the major threat to the quality of public discourse that progressives claim it is – then clearly Wales’s project might be a worthwhile venture.

But “fake news” is fake news.

Sure there might be one or two young entrepreneurs in Macedonia who somehow make a living out of selling fake news stories. Which is huge if true because it’s difficult enough to make a living these days selling true news stories – so if they’re really swinging it, these guys deserve all the money they get.

Easily the main reason, though, why we hear about “fake news” so much these days is that it’s the liberal-left’s favourite excuse as to why they lost Brexit and why they lost the U.S. presidential election. Apparently, if it hadn’t been for all the completely “fake news” claiming that Hillary Clinton was a lying, scheming, cheating, email-hiding crook with blood on her hands, not a single person would have been stupid enough to vote Trump.

Ditto Brexit: it was all to do with “fake news” stories like the £350 million figure on the side of the bus which literally everyone who voted Brexit thought was going straight to the NHS – otherwise, of course, they would all have done the sensible thing and voted to remain shackled to a failing, democratically unaccountable, incompetent, corrupt, socialist superstate currently run by a rude drunkard and a bunch of fascistic technocrats. Fake news made all the difference. Not.

They were too polite to say what I’m sure they wanted to say which is that – as most liberals do – they mentally include Breitbart in the fake news category.

But they both very much believed that “fake news” was a thing and that it posed a significant threat to the kind of fair and balanced and scrupulously accurate news that their own organisations produced.

At this moment I realised something extraordinary: liberals actually believe this shit.

2016 was a great year for most of us – but just because we’ve gained the beachhead doesn’t mean we’re going to win the war.

With Brexit and Donald Trump, we’ve done the equivalent of capturing everywhere from Pointe Du Hoc to Pegasus Bridge. But just like with D-Day, the worst of the fighting is yet to come. Our enemy is fanatical, determined, well organised. Plus, they still hold most of the key positions: the big banks, the corporations, the top law firms, the civil service, local government, the universities, the schools, the mainstream media, Hollywood… Give those bastards half the chance and they’ll drive us back into the sea – which, in contemporary terms, means nixing Brexit (or giving us “soft Brexit”, which is basically the same thing) and frustrating all the things President Trump will try to do to Make America Great Again.

I use the war analogy first because World War II analogies never fail, but second because this really is a war that we’re fighting. The bad news is that wars are hard, costly and ugly. The good news is that we’re on the right side and we’re going to win. Here’s how:

We will never underestimate the wickedness of the enemy

The liberal-left loves to portray us as the bad guys. But that’s justprojection. From Mao’s China to Stalin’s Soviet Union, from Cuba to North Korea, history is littered with the wreckage of failed left wing schemes to make the world a better, fairer place.

As the great, now sadly-retired Thomas Sowell says, “Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it.” Its malign influence is still with us today. Innocent boys being accused of rape on college campuses; genuine rapes committed by gangs of Muslim taxi drivers in northern England and by gangs of Muslim immigrants in German cities like Cologne; hundreds of thousands driven into fuel poverty, landscapes ravaged, avian fauna sliced and diced as a result of crazy renewable energy policies; a Nobel-prize-winning scientist driven out of his job because a feminist loser misreported something he said about women at a conference; generations of kids denied a rigorous, disciplined, useful education; the needless violence and tension engendered by #blacklivesmatter: we should never concede the moral high ground to the kind of people who make all this sort of stuff possible, no matter how many times they tell us how evil and selfish and uncaring we are.

We will always remember that we are better than them

I’ll give you an example: the dumbass lecturer at Drexel who tweeted that what he wanted for Christmas was “white genocide”. Should we be demanding that the university authorities sack him at once? Of course we shouldn’t.

The man has performed an invaluable public service: he has provided the perfect example of how ingrained the values of the left are in academe; he has shown prospective applicants to the Politics and Global Studies course at Drexel University in Philadelphia that unless they want to be indoctrinated with hard-left lunacy they might want to reconsider; he has further shown alumni of Drexel University who believe in old fashioned stuff like free markets that maybe they shouldn’t include their alma mater in their million dollar bequests, after all.

Sure, we should jeer and crow when we catch idiots like this man expressing reprehensible opinions. But the idea that someone should actually lose their job for something they said on Twitter ought to be anathema to those of us on the right side of the argument. One of the most thoroughly hateful things about the left is the way it tries to constrain free expression. If we play the same game, we are no better than they are. And face it: we just are.

We will take the fight to the enemy, not cower in No Man’s Land

One of the best things about 2016 for me was the way it gave the lie to the weaselish and wet aphorism – so often repeated by so many of our impeccably reasonable, sensible and balanced TV and newspaper pundits – that elections are “won in the centre ground.”

This was the Belial philosophy that gave us, in the U.S., that hideous continuum from the Bushes and the Clintons to Obama; and in Britain, the grotesque and malign Third Way squishery that took us from Tony Blair through to his (self-admitted heir) David Cameron and beyond. (It’s also the mindset which invented the disgraceful, sell-out concept of “soft Brexit”.)

No wonder so many of us had become so fed up with politics: no matter which party you voted for, whether the notionally left-wing one or the notionally right-wing one you still seemed to end up up with the same old vested interests, the same old liberal Establishment elite.

Of course we should always despise the liberal-left because their philosophy is morally bankrupt, dangerous and wrong. But I sometimes think that the people we should despise most of all are the squishes who pretend to be on our side of the argument but forever betray our cause. Sometimes they do this by throwing the more outspoken among us to the wolves in order to signal how tolerant and virtuous they are; sometimes they do this by endorsing some fatuous liberal position in order to show their willingness to compromise.

I call the latter approach the “dogshit yogurt fallacy.”

If conservatives like fruit or honey in their yogurt and liberals prefer to eat it with dogshit, it is NOT a sensible accommodation – much as our centrist conservative columnists might wish it so – to say: “All right. How about we eat our yogurt with a little bit of both?” We need to understand, very clearly, that there are such things as right and wrong; and that, furthermore, it is always worth fighting to the bitter end for the right thing rather than accepting second best because a bunch of lawyers and politicians and hairdressers from Brazil and squishy newspaper columnists and other members of the liberal elite have told us that second best is the best we can hope for.

On Brexit, for example, I’m with Her Majesty the Queen: “‘I don’t see why we can’t just get out? What’s the problem?’

President-elect Donald Trump appears to be softening his tone on whether climate change is real and on his stated plans to scrap the recent multinational agreement to limit carbon emissions.

The name for this nonsense is “fake news” – as becomes clear when you read the transcripts of what President-Elect Trump actually said at his meeting with The New York Times.

THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN, opinion columnist: But it’s really important to me, and I think to a lot of our readers, to know where you’re going to go with this. I don’t think anyone objects to, you know, doing all forms of energy. But are you going to take America out of the world’s lead of confronting climate change?

TRUMP: I’m looking at it very closely, Tom. I’ll tell you what. I have an open mind to it. We’re going to look very carefully. It’s one issue that’s interesting because there are few things where there’s more division than climate change. You don’t tend to hear this, but there are people on the other side of that issue who are, think, don’t even …

ARTHUR SULZBERGER Jr., publisher of The New York Times: We do hear it.

So at this point, Trump is gently introducing the NYT‘s liberals to the concept that not everyone thinks the same way on climate change as they do.

Let’s carry on, shall we?

FRIEDMAN: I was on ‘Squawk Box’ with Joe Kernen this morning, so I got an earful of it.

[laughter]

TRUMP: Joe is one of them. But a lot of smart people disagree with you. I have a very open mind. And I’m going to study a lot of the things that happened on it and we’re going to look at it very carefully. But I have an open mind.

SULZBERGER: Well, since we’re living on an island, sir, I want to thank you for having an open mind. We saw what these storms are now doing, right? We’ve seen it personally. Straight up.

FRIEDMAN: But you have an open mind on this?

TRUMP: I do have an open mind. And we’ve had storms always, Arthur.

SULZBERGER: Not like this.

TRUMP: You know the hottest day ever was in 1890-something, 98. You know, you can make lots of cases for different views. I have a totally open mind.

My uncle was for 35 years a professor at M.I.T. He was a great engineer, scientist. He was a great guy. And he was … a long time ago, he had feelings — this was a long time ago — he had feelings on this subject. It’s a very complex subject. I’m not sure anybody is ever going to really know. I know we have, they say they have science on one side but then they also have those horrible emails that were sent between the scientists. Where was that, in Geneva or wherever five years ago? Terrible. Where they got caught, you know, so you see that and you say, what’s this all about. I absolutely have an open mind. I will tell you this: Clean air is vitally important. Clean water, crystal clean water is vitally important. Safety is vitally important.

And you know, you mentioned a lot of the courses. I have some great, great, very successful golf courses. I’ve received so many environmental awards for the way I’ve done, you know. I’ve done a tremendous amount of work where I’ve received tremendous numbers. Sometimes I’ll say I’m actually an environmentalist and people will smile in some cases and other people that know me understand that’s true. Open mind.

With characteristic subtlety, intelligence and insight, the New York Times has lumbered into the Brexit debate and dog-whistled its left-leaning readership with a piece heavy hinting that thanks to Nigel Farage Britain is the new Nazi Germany.

Let’s examine its argument in more detail, starting with the headline. I’ve put the New York Times’s words in bold; my comments appear below.

Britain Asks if Tone of ‘Brexit’ Campaign Made Violence Inevitable

New York Times Journalist States that Tone of ‘Brexit’ Campaign Made Violence Inevitable, taking lead from left-leaning Remain activists and commentators whose biased opinions he cherry-picks to support his threadbare thesis.

As the shock of the brutal murder of a young member of Parliament began to subside on Friday, there was a growing sense in Britain that something ominous had been unleashed in the country.

Whence grew this ‘growing sense’? The only people actually promulgating this line are left-leaning, pro-Remain activists who’ve seen a Rahm-Emanuel-style opportunity in the crisis of a mother-of-two’s senseless, brutal murder. Most normal people would much prefer it if Britain’s democratic future were debated on more relevant issues.

The increasingly ugly anti-immigrant tone to the campaign

This is not a fact but a left-wing propaganda trope. Sure there have been odd lapses of taste, notably the somewhat crass Breaking Point poster. But for most of this referendum campaign the nastiness has been confined to the Remain side – whose Project Fear has been characterised by mendacity, ad hominems, snobbery and bullying. Leave, on the other hand, have sought to keep their tone as upbeat and positive as possible; as have UKIP and Nigel Farage. This is because they have been alive to the possibility that their respectable position on controlled immigration will inevitably be misrepresented by the left as xenophobia and racism. So what Erlanger is doing here isn’t journalism but propaganda: stating as fact something he might wish to be so but for which he can demonstrate little evidence other than hearsay from parti-pris commenters.

The high-water mark of English football violence was thirty years ago. Either Erlanger doesn’t know this – in which case why he is commenting on UK affairs? – or he is being deliberately misleading.

…has left many here feeling that the boundaries of acceptable behavior are breaking down.

“Many”? See above and below.

“What we are just seeing generally is a very disturbing shift in British politics,” said Simon Tilford, the deputy director of the Center for European Reform, which favors British membership. “It is quite upsetting to me what is happening.”

“As a pro-EU activist I will say anything to smear the other side.”

With next Thursday’s vote on the referendum only days away, campaigning was suspended as a gesture of mourning and respect for the victim, Jo Cox, 41, a rising star in the opposition Labour Party who, not coincidentally, was a strong backer of Britain’s remaining inside the bloc.

That “not coincidentally” is flat-out in contempt of court. You are ascribing motives to the killer which have yet to be established in a court of law. Also, you are trying to pin the murder on the entire Brexit cause. Low – really low.

While it is still too early to say how the attack will change the dynamics of the campaign, it has unquestionably shifted the focus from the growing momentum of those in favor of leaving to the anti-immigrant tactics they have employed as the vote has drawn closer.

No. The Leave campaign is not “anti-immigrant”: it has simply argued for controlled migration, which is something else entirely.

The suspect arrested in the killing, Thomas Mair, 52, has a history of mental illness.

Wow. An actual sentence stating the truth. But let’s wait for the inevitable “but”, shall we?

But he was also reported to have been in contact with far-right groups in the United States and Britain, and to have said, “Britain first!” several times as he attacked Ms. Cox. Britain First, a far-right nationalist group, denied any links with Mr. Mair, but a United States civil rights group said he had been associated with an American neo-Nazi organization called the National Alliance.

As Peter Hitchens notes in this must-readMail piece, “disturbed people do sometimes embrace the wilder political and religious creeds. But it is their mental illness, not these barely understood ‘opinions’, that makes them capable of the dreadful act of killing – an act which separates them from the rest of humanity.” Around 30 million people – half Britain’s population – want to vote Leave. The idea, as Erlanger and others are hinting, that they might have anything remotely in common with this mentally ill man or his warped political associations is disgusting.

Tears, bitter polar bear tears

Now the New York Times’s environment desk has closed these bears will die!!!

It’s Death of Little Nell time again in the field of climate “science.” The New York Times – aka Pravda – has announced the closure of its Environment Desk. Rumours that the entire environment team, headed by Andy Revkin, have volunteered to be recycled into compost and spread on the lawn of the new billion dollar home Al Gore bought with the proceeds of his sale of Current TV to Middle Eastern oil interests are as yet unconfirmed. What we do know is that it’s very, very sad and that all over the Arctic baby polar bears are weeping bitter tears of regret.

A spokesman for the New York Times, quoted in the Guardian, has reaffirmed the paper’s commitment to environmental issues.

“We devote a lot of resources to it, now more than ever. We have not lost any desire for environmental coverage. This is purely a structural matter.”

Absolutely. It’s what newspapers always do when they’re committed to a particular field: close down the entire department responsible for covering it.

But it’s still not going to stop some mean-minded cynics sniping and casting aspersions, I’ll bet. Why, some of them will be pointing out the eerie coincidence with the Met Office recent tacit admission that “global warming” isn’t anywhere near what that their dodgy models predicted it would be. And also with NASA’s recent admission that solar variation has a much more significant on terrestrial climate than it has hitherto been prepared to acknowledge. If you didn’t know better, you’d almost get the impression that AGW theory has been so crushingly falsified that hard-headed newspaper executives, even ones at papers as painfully right-on as the New York Times, just aren’t prepared to fund its promulgation any more.

What this means for similarly overstaffed environment desks at other left-wing newspapers one can scarcely begin to imagine. Might it be that we never again read a piece by Leo Hickman entitled “How Do You Tell Your Five Year Old Son That His World Is About To Explode In A Blazing Fireball Because Of Man’s Selfishness And Greed And Refusal To Change His Lifestyle?”

What, and no more Caroline Lucas essays, either on jaunty topics like “My plan for Britain: rationing; cold baths; the banning of cars; and hairshirts for everyone – to be enforced by my new green Mutaween of Environmental Commissars”?

And how would we cope if we never get to read any more Damian Carrington articles on “Official: wind farms are brilliant for bats and rare birds, boosting their numbers by gazillions every year – says new research by RenewablesUK,” and “Global warming: why the latest evidence that it’s going down is sure-fire proof that it’s going up, says Met Office” and “How fracking poisons the water supply, steals food from the poor, encourages racism and causes baby kittens in wicker baskets to die in agony mewling for their mothers”.

22 thoughts on “Now even Pravda admits the ‘global warming’ jig is up”

Dave Morris says:14th January 2013 at 10:55 amDelingpole, you are a liar and right wing propagandist. Nothing you say resembles truth or reflects the reality of the world we live in (and by this i mean planet Earth, not planet Delingploe, which you live on), and are nothing more than il-informed and bigoted opinion. You know nothing about science or indeed any topic you spout your narrow-minded opinion about. You are a charlatan and a fraud and I hope that more people on here tell you how much a buffoon you are, but i suspect I am the only person who will read your vile dishonesty and lies.

PsychoPigeon says:21st January 2013 at 11:53 amYeah, you show him with your personal attacks, you’ve out-scienced him! Meanwhile in non-lala land Al Gore is still trying to make vast sums of money for himself and his buddies in the Oil industry.

Dave Morris says:30th January 2013 at 10:03 amI’m not a scientist. Neither is Delingpole, and neither are you. Pretty much every scientist on the planet has already ‘out-scienced’ him. It’s not up for debate. The argument he presents is akin to religious zealots arguing against evolution, in favour of a divine creator. It’s laughable. Well, it would be if it wasn’t such a catastrophically ignorant and destructive point of view to hold.

As for your ‘oil industry’ quip, i assume you’re referring to Gore selling his cable TV station to Al Jazeera news.

Seriously, watch it. All of it. With an open mind, free of prejudice. Then read the list of sources that helped make the film. Then come back on here and say something honest. Something sincere.

Richard M says:31st January 2013 at 12:00 pm“It’s not up for debate. The argument he presents is akin to religious zealots arguing against evolution, in favour of a divine creator. It’s laughable. Well, it would be if it wasn’t such a catastrophically ignorant and destructive point of view to hold.”

This is the usual self righteous rot that the environmentalist morons trot out.

Apply some very basic scientific method to the problem. Have you ever heard of ‘signal vs noise’? or ‘Statistical significance?’

If not, look it up.

Then consider that the earth is 4.5 billion years old and we only have a reliable data-set for less than a hundred years.

To claim any sort of causation on such a pathetic set of the data is joke science and if presented as a finding of something else, say the genetic likelihood of ginger people being left handed, all the eminent ‘climate scientists’ would laugh it out the door.

Martin Lack says:31st January 2013 at 12:32 pm“This is the usual self righteous rot that the environmentalist morons trot out.” – Presumably, Richard, your definition of ‘environmentalist moron’ includes the majority of members of every reputable scientific body on the planet? Have you ever heard of ‘Dunning-Kruger Effect’ or ‘cognitive dissonance’?

If not, look it up.

But, of course, how stupid of me: Rather than accept that the vast majority of scientists have examined all the palaeoclimatic evidence and concluded that the primary cause of ongoing climate disruption (occurring ten times faster than any previous natural change) is a 40% increase in atmospheric CO2 (rather than a 4% increase in water vapour or a <1% increase in total solar irradiance)… You prefer to invoke a conspiracy theory that requires the vast majority of scientists and/or governments to agree to perpetuate a myth in order to frighten people into accepting ever higher levels of taxation and/or autocratic government.

If so, can you tell me how they have managed to stitch-up the statistics that tell us every decade since the 1970s has been warmer than its predecessor; and/or that extreme weather events of all kinds are becoming more frequent and more intense (as predicted by atmospheric physics for a warming planet)?… And please try responding with something that has not been repeatedly debunked such as “Global warming stopped in 1998″. David Rose tries that one roughly every six months and, every time he does, the Met Office (and many others) tell him why he is wrong…

Sadly, however, whereas history may well always be written by the winners, conspiracy theories are, as David Aaronovitch points out in his book Voodoo Histories, generally ‘history’ as written by the losers; ‘bedtime stories’ for people who find reality far too scary to deal with; or as a means of abdicating any/all responsibility for the World not being as they would like it to be.

Can I suggest you stop listening to people who tell you what you want to hear, stop pretending that all opinions are equally valid, and start dealing with the extremely high probability that the vast majority of relevantly qualified scientists know what they are talking about; and are not lying to you in order to perpetuate their research funding. You are picking a fight with history and science and, one thing I can guarantee, you will lose.

Why don’t you address the point I actually raised, rather than spout off about your favourite talking points?

The world’s weather system is 4.5 billion years old. We have data for less than a century.

Explain, please, how that is not joke science?

It is on par with any of the ludicrous studies you will read in the Daily Mail about how staring at the Mona Lisa gives you cancer (or cures cancer depending on the day).

As for this: “If so, can you tell me how they have managed to stitch-up the statistics that tell us every decade since the 1970s has been warmer than its predecessor”

So what?

The world is 4.5 billion years old. A couple of decades of warming? It could not be any less statistically relevant.

” the vast majority of scientists have examined all the palaeoclimatic evidence and concluded that the primary cause of ongoing climate disruption”

I don’t imagine any ‘grand conspiracy’ at all. It is a collective inability to apply basic scientific rigour to a bandwagon. How exciting is it to suggest that we lack the data to decide either way.

The conclusions that are drawn from the data-set examined are probably sound – but that is the exact problem.

A sample of ten people does not mean it is representative for the rest of the planet.

A trend of a few decades (disputed) does not indicate anything that is statistically significant over the life of the system.

You blather about the palaeoclimatic evidence – but they are hardly sensitive and accurate measures of temperature, are they? Sharp temperature increases can easily exist without showing up in ice-core samples etc…

As for your (and the environmental movement as a whole) deep love of argumentum ad populum, try to remember Copernicus, The Law of Parity, Steric hindrance, viruses as the cause of cancer, fusion reactors, et al.

Scientific consensus and orthodoxy is nowhere near as cast iron as you seem to think it is.

AGW is just a theory and one with, if viewed rationally, a less than compelling evidence base (4.5 billion years vs >100 years of hard data). Portraying it as anything else is disingenuous. Using it as a tool for policy setting is dangerous.

There are many more environmental causes that are more deserving and get a pathetic fraction of the money or energy devoted to it. While we wring our hands about carbon credits we will probably lose the Rhino and African elephant and most of our rainforests besides.

Climate sceptics are not like Galileo (or Copernicus); who were fighting against the anti-intellectual and obscurantist Catholic Church. Rejection of the modern-day consensus regarding anthropogenic climate disruption – theoretically deduced, confirmed by observation, and validated my predictive computer modelling – is the antithesis of what Copernicus and Galileo did for the advancement of science. It took the Catholic Church centuries to admit its error; and we can but hope that climate sceptics will now be a lot faster.

If you are not a conspiracy theorist, why is it that you consider yourself more likely to be correct about climate science than the vast majority of climate scientists? Are they all just plain stupid? Thanks to Occam’s Razor, it is far more likely that the vast majority of climate scientists are correct and that the fossil fuel industry has – just as the tobacco industry did – orchestrated a lengthy campaign to discredit the science and the scientists that endanger its future profitability. If anyone is in any doubt, I think they should read this:http://www.euronet.nl/users/e_wesker/ew@shell/API-prop.html

Can I ask why you do not dispute the theory of gravity, the existence of the Higgs-Boson, or 22 dimensions of space-time? Could it perhaps be because (unlike the finite nature of this planet’s natural resources and recycling capabilities) the reality of these things does not demand changes in human behaviour to make it sustainable?http://lackofenvironment.wordpress.com/2013/02/01/the-co2-fairy-does-not-exist-yet/

“You prefer to invoke a conspiracy theory that requires the vast majority of scientists and/or governments to agree to perpetuate a myth in order to frighten people into accepting ever higher levels of taxation and/or autocratic government”

You move on, without even a whiff of shame, to this:

“the fossil fuel industry has – just as the tobacco industry did – orchestrated a lengthy campaign to discredit the science and the scientists that endanger its future profitability.”

Good gracious.

I see you decided not to engage with the other examples of scientific orthodoxy that were proved to be incorrect. The more modern examples are much more relevant – no battles against the evil Catholics there.

“If you are not a conspiracy theorist, why is it that you consider yourself more likely to be correct about climate science than the vast majority of climate scientists? ”

This myth that fact is established by majority is the most bizzare outcome of this climate ‘debate’. Why? When has that ever been the case?

And I don’t claim any special status for myself, either. I am merely pointing out what appears obvious and irrefutable – as other scientists have done.

But of course this will just invoke a round of top-trumps style, ‘my scientist is better than your scientist nonsense’.

It is the crusade mentality that has seized control of the argument that is so disturbing. A rational approach would be to embrace the uncertainty which clearly outweighs any of the certainties and is, after all, the heart of a scientific approach.

I could list untold other ‘morons’, as you call them, but it’s a waste of time, as your argument reflects an unfortunate yet typically prejudiced and closed-minded attitude, the ignorance of which is indicative of a total lack of comprehension to this vastly complex issue.

Environmentalists are highlighting the signal, while your argument, if one can call it that, represents background noise.

Seriously, go back to school.

Richard M says:2nd February 2013 at 6:17 am“Environmentalists are highlighting the signal, while your argument, if one can call it that, represents background noise.”

What, by pointing out an irrefutable fact that we have a minuscule set of measurable and consistent data?

You seem to think that I am screaming ‘its all just a conspiracy! its not happening!’. I am not. I am pointing out that if you approach the subject with the same scientific rigour that is applied elsewhere then it falls down at this very basic point.

We don’t have enough data to make solid conclusions.

Any theories derived from the available data is therefore suspect.

Anyone who has even a passing understanding of scientific theory should be able to understand this.

“Environmentalists are highlighting the signal, while your argument, if one can call it that, represents background noise.”

This again highlights your complete unfamiliarity with a really quite basic concept. Try, hard as it will be for you, to imagine the issue if it were presented in another context.

Imagine being told that there was a extreme correlation between the instances of repeat offenders and living next to electrical substations. All the data gathered points to a compelling case for causation – yet when you look at it the study covers ten people against a world population of 6.9 billion. You would (one would hope) dismiss it out of hand.

Interesting, but hardly representative. Hardly a reason to dictate policy.

Martin Lack says:2nd February 2013 at 9:45 am“Anyone who has even a passing understanding of scientific theory should be able to understand this” As I said, please explain to me why I should believe the vast majority of are apparently incapable of doing so.

Dave Morris says:5th February 2013 at 9:41 amWow! I almost admire your blinkered stubbornness. Look, i understand what you’re saying. Really i do. My point is that when you say things like:
“We don’t have enough data to make solid conclusions,”
you make it sound like you’re a scientist studying and examining the data. Now obviously i don’t know you (praise Jesus), as i live in the real world, but i know enough from the immature comments above that you are not a scientist. Not even close. So comments like this are disingenuous at best, and incredibly harmful and destructive at worst. harmful because it’s so completely untrue. Destructive because the consequences of such narrow-minded bigotry and obtuseness is that ‘we’, i.e. humanity, will never address the issue until its too late.

Why don’t you just read and listen to what scientists and experts are saying every day? The data is there, it is valid. The conclusions are painfully obvious and agreed by such an overwhelming majority, that, as you keep harping on about, the minority opinion – opinion, mind, represents such a minute number, that it is insignificant and ergo ignored by everyone. Except of course by non-scientist liars and idiots like Delingpole.

Here, i’ll even humour you. I’ll throw you a bone. Hell, i’ll give you 2! (did you even watch the documentary ‘Home’ in the above link?):

Mate, the problem is you! I hear what you’re saying about a lack of credible or valid data. I get it. It’s just that this argument is not true. It’s so wide of the mark as to be offensive.

“by pointing out an irrefutable fact that we have a minuscule set of measurable and consistent data”

Just because you say something, or believe something is irrefutable, doesn’t make it true or factual. What you are saying is not true. It is a lie. I’m not saying you’re a liar, as i’m sure you believe in what you say, much like the religious zealot believes in a bearded man sitting in a cloud and hating gay people, or like the insane person who believes their psychosis-induced imagined world to be reality. You are deluded, sir. And it’s only your ego that refuses to allow you to take a deep breath, read an article like this:

Ok, i’m done. Please don’t reply to this until you have read or watched the links as i’m really not interested in anything you have to say. I understand your argument, i just don’t accept it. Maybe if you were a scientist your opinion would carry some weight, but you’re not. So quit pretending you’re an expert that knows more than people like David Attenborough. I’m sick to the back teeth of arm-chair critics like you pretending your warped and corrupted world view should be respected.

Carl Worsham says:19th February 2013 at 11:52 pmSo you are saying the NY Times is not closing it’s Environment Desk? I don’t understand. Or, are you just calling people names and ranting? What is the purpose of your post? To make yourself look stupid? If so, it worked.

Martin Lack says:20th February 2013 at 11:26 amThe NYT may well have closed its Environment Desk but Andy Revkin still has a job there, so what exactly is the point of Mr Delingpole’s article? To make himself look stupid? If so, it worked..

Dave Morris may have been a bit rude but he has a valid point: James is not a scientist and is on record as saying he has neither the time to read nor the ability to understand peer-reviewed scientific papers. Therefore, taking his cue from PR companies like Hill & Knowlton , he just sticks to trying to discredit science and scientists… because of another one of his acknowledged handicaps – his libertarian conservative prejudice.

Timothy Phillips says:15th January 2013 at 11:31 pmJames, I read your article in support of Lindzen’s speech to the house of commons. You say: the facts speak for themselves, and yet, with a little research, something you seem to do little of, I have a gentle dismantling of his arguments by leading British climate scientists, some from the same venerable institutions you studied at! Of course, when one’s mind is so set in stone, then you will of course dismiss this re-buttle as scaremongering or leftist, money grabbing. Your stated position is in my opinion a very lazy one requiring no research or re-thinking.

Martin Lack says:23rd January 2013 at 4:12 pmWell said, Timothy. You are presumably referring to Professor Lindzen’s speech to an invited audience in Committee Room 14 inside the Palace of Westminster on 22 Feb 2012. If so, unlike James, I was there for the whole speech and was prevented from asking a question because I tried first to address some of Lindzen’s misrepresentation of the facts. If you were not aware of all this already, a good place to start is this: No cause for alarm? – You cannot be serious! (5 March 2012).

Martin Lack says:23rd January 2013 at 3:49 pmJames, as the banner to your blog legitimately asserts, you are an author, a blogger, a libertarian, and a political commentator. However, as this post well demonstrates, you are not a climate (or environmental) scientist.

It disappoints me that you will not even acknowledge my existence. Is your ego so fragile that you are still annoyed about a stupid stunt I pulled two years ago? If so, this is a great shame because my purpose is not to attack you; I am trying to help you acknowledge the limitations of your own expertise (such as we all have).

As I have made clear on my blog, I am no Watermelon; I am certainly not a Liberal or a Socialist; and therefore you and I have much more in common than you might have thought.

AR99_64b says:9th February 2013 at 3:49 pmDelingpole, you are a self-confessed Bullingdon sycophant who can’t be trusted. I hope you enjoy being used by an entire industry to peddle lies which ultimately benefit it, not you. Eventually, you will be left out in the cold. And you’ll realise their promises were as empty as your soul.

Martin Lack says:9th February 2013 at 4:08 pmAnonymity is great, isn’t it? Using my real name, I have to be so much more polite. However, since I do not think he is paid to tell lies on behalf of anyone (he genuinely believes what he writes makes sense), I concur with your analysis of the predicament in which Mr Delingpole will one day find himself.

Johan Harald Berger says:8th April 2013 at 6:50 pmJohan Berger – frm. teacher in Norway – is chipping in to give thanks for the sundry information in your book, Watermelons, which I have just finished reading. The book seems well researched and is written in a style not pompous nor dubious – frankly, I learnt a LOT from it! If you are writing another book on, say, corruption in economy by the state, I will surely give it a read, but beware of the Liberal Media and their (still!) darling Barry Obama, who will fight tooth and claw to deflect from sanity. Utopianism is ever their ‘forte’..

claude faria says:30th October 2013 at 11:27 pmI’m not a scientist, else, I’m a poor fellow that lives in a third world country riddled with corruption, socialism and stupidity. But I read Delingpole’s book, and I think he’s got a good point. Im my overt scientific ignorance, I just can’t figure up how can CO2, that’s present in the atmosphere in a rare proportion of less than 0,3%, represent such a menace for humankind. Much less cow’s farting… You, climate alarmists, are not right. You can’t be right. It’s illogical. It’s non sense. Ockam’s razor tells me.

“The articles published today and in coming days are based on thousands of United States embassy cables, the daily reports from the field intended for the eyes of senior policy makers in Washington. The New York Times and a number of publications in Europe were given access to the material several weeks ago and agreed to begin publication of articles based on the cables online on Sunday. The Times believes that the documents serve an important public interest, illuminating the goals, successes, compromises and frustrations of American diplomacy in a way that other accounts cannot match.” New York Times editorial 29/11/2010

Interested readers may want to compare and contrast Revkin’s statement of principle with the editorial note posted by the Times on the WikiLeaks documents this afternoon. Today the Times cites the availability of the documents elsewhere and the public interest in their revelations as supporting their publication by the Times. Both factors applied in roughly equal measure to the Climategate emails.

Without belaboring the point, let us note simply that the two statements are logically irreconcilable. Perhaps something other than principle and logic were at work then, or are at work now.

Actually no, Scott, I think it’s important that we should “belabor” the point by remembering a few more occasions where the New York Times has been happy to sacrifice principle in order to get across the “correct” political message:

1. In 2007, “Pravda” gave the radical anti-war group MoveOn.org a $77,508 discount to run a full page ad attacking the then US commander in Iraq General Petraeus as “General Betray Us.”

2. In the 1930s “Pravda” earned its nickname thanks to the heroic efforts of its Soviet correspondent Walter Duranty who hymned the glorious achievements of Stalin and denied the existence of the Ukraine famine.

3. In 2005, “Pravda” heroically exposed efforts by the evil fascist Bush regime to impose wiretaps on suspected Al Qaeda terrorists thereby seriously and unfairly jeopardising the ability of oppressed victims of Islamophobia to express their frustration with the Western Judao-Christian capitalist hegemony through such traditional protest methods as suicide bombs.

4. In 2006 it struck a similarly powerful blow against white racism by continuing to pursue the case of the Duke lacrosse players who had supposedly raped a poor black woman, regardless of overwhelming evidence that the boys were entirely innocent. A Times internal investigation concluded that “most flaws flowed from journalistic lapses rather than ideological bias.”

One thought on “Wikileaks: Old Gray Lady invokes the harlot’s prerogative”

Velocity says:30th November 2010 at 11:58 amThe vacuous self serving power structure that is Gov’t always thinks its ‘authority’ is an end in itself and aways therefore defends itself. That most idiotic of increasingly Totalitarian regimes in ‘the land of the free’, the US Gov’t, has just awarded itself the power to close down that most open source of freedom, the Police can now grab and close down websites (on a whim, no criminal conviction or right to stop).

Everything Gov’t touches turns to crap.

It was only a matter of time before the freedom loving web was trampled on by that most corrupt, ignorant, vacuous, self serving and ‘authority defending’ structure, Government.

I understand an Attorney General is already looking to grab Wikileaks.

I also understand Wikileaks next major target is one of the hugely fraudulent mass criminal enterprises that is a major Wall Street US bank.